


Conversations

by entanglednow



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-05
Updated: 2008-11-05
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entanglednow/pseuds/entanglednow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I know you're there. You might as well come out so we can at least pretend we're civilised."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conversations

The bathroom wasn't empty. Adam had been around a long time, and he knew when he was being watched, knew perhaps even better when he was being hunted. But he ignored the feeling, while he ran the towel under the faucet, ignored it while he wiped mud off of his forehead, and out of his hairline.

"I know you're there. You might as well come out, so we can at least pretend we're civilised."

Sylar shouldn't have blended in so well. He was a pillar of darkness wrapped in black wool, hair and eyes darker still. But he knew how to stand without being noticed, he knew how to not be seen.  He'd clearly mastered that long predatory wait, that shouldn't have come so easily to a watchmaker. But of course that was nothing even close to _all_ he'd ever been. If Adam was a man inclined to care, he might even have felt sorry for him.

Sylar stepped forward, just far enough to be out of the reach of the neon light, standing just at the edge of its bright flare.

"How did you know I was there," he asked curiously, tilting his head, in a way that was almost threatening.

Adam let a longer, still white, edge of the towel trail under the faucet, and set about cleaning the other side of his face.

"Instinct, and I heard you breathing."

Sylar didn't bother to look upset at being caught out. "I could have been someone else," he offered casually.

"One of them," Adam said in an amused tone of voice. "Though I'm fairly sure they would have been all smiles and joviality, rather than lurking somewhere in the dark."

"Are they yours?" Sylar's voice was briefly curious.

Adam shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't have any affiliations, not at present anyway, and I'm not likely to any time soon. But they never change, at least the organisations don't. Only the faces do."

"In your case they don't," Sylar pointed out.

"Very true." Adam squeezed water out of cloth.

"They'll have sent people for you too then," Sylar said calmly, and from the look of his eyes, from that assured and altogether _sharp_ look, Adam suspected they had sent someone for Sylar already. Adam rather thought that he'd declined, _aggressively_. He stopped wiping, and simply stared at his half-clean face in the mirror.

"Oh I'm sure they have, but I learned very quickly that they don't matter," Adam said simply. "No matter which side you choose, the world doesn't care. Which is why I follow other people's grand plans only as long as they serve my interests."

"And what are your interests?" Sylar asked quietly.

Adam laughed, one quick, amused tear of sound in the bathroom.

"I think I'll keep those to myself for the moment."

"Are you afraid I'll think less of you." Sylar was astonishingly good at needling people in a way that was more aggressive than sly, and Adam had to wonder where he'd learnt that from.

"Frankly I don't care in the slightest what you think of me," Adam said honestly. "I've just crawled out of the grave so forgive me if I'm more honest than usual, it's not the pleasantest experience." The wet length of cloth gradually took the grey-brown smear of dirt off of his left cheekbone, leaving it sharp, and pale, and clean, while Sylar watched him through dark eyes. A thousand shades of mistrust and curiousity. Adam had never seen anyone broken so cleanly, all the way through.

He feigned total disinterest.

"You know why I'm here," Sylar said slowly.

Adam suspected Sylar enjoyed the chase, and the capture, this was new territory, someone coming to him, someone who refused to run. Though he was still smart enough to feel his way round the situation.

He had an intuitive understanding of -

Well _of course_ he did, how stupid of him.

"Of course I know why you're here," Adam said smoothly. "That's the point isn't it, I've been playing this game a while, and though you're not an amateur you're surviving mostly on good luck, fury and a certain innate survival instinct so far."

The face in the mirror flared in anger, but the pause was long enough for Adam to wipe mud off of his nose.

"I could be polite but I suspect at the end of this conversation you'll slice into my head and do whatever curious and disturbing thing it is you do to absorb other people's abilities, either way."

Sylar did smile then, and Adam discovered he'd already learnt how to hide his surprise.

"You don't sound worried." Sylar's voice was a mixture of curiosity and amusement.

"Oh I've had my skull carved open before, I've lost half my head...my entire head more than once. I've developed a somewhat unusual relationship with personal injury, that's something of a necessity when you can't die." Adam ran a hand through his hair, and dirt skittered down into the sink, and around the floor at his feet. "It's not the first time I've dragged myself out of the ground either, and that never fails to be a disturbing adventure every time." Adam tipped his head over his shoulder. "You learn to hold your breath when it's appropriate, and use sheer ruthless determination for the rest, but then I think you've already mastered that haven't you?"

Sylar came closer, stared at him in the mirror. Adam suspected that he'd never practised the art of looming, that he found himself adept at it purely by accident. An awkward, almost confused positioning of his own over-long limbs. Like he wasn't quite as confident in them as he wanted people to think.

"You're still in the angry adolescence of your powers, you have to know you can't keep doing what you're doing forever, that you'll have to grow, that you'll have to _change_."

"I like what I am," Sylar said quietly, and whether that was true or not it was immaterial.

"Oh I rather doubt that, enjoy what you do certainly, revel in the power that it gives you absolutely but 'like what you are?'" Adam made a face in the mirror that opened a furious scowl on Sylar's face.

"Then why did you come here? Why would you hand me your ability so easily?"

Adam looked up and met his eyes again.

"I don't intend to hand it to you."

The edge of Sylar's mouth rose.

"You expect me to take it from you?"

"If you're really as ruthless as they say you are." Adam tossed the towel on the empty side next to the sink. "But if it's abilities you want...you don't live as long as I have without being able to spot people who are special."

Adam lifted his head, checked the long line of his throat for smears of dirt, and then very slowly turned around.

Sylar had shifted closer during the quiet pauses during their conversation, more than close enough to touch, close enough that Adam could feel the warm flare of his breath against his skin.

"And you're right about one thing, some people don't deserve their powers."

The silence was a living thing for a handful of heartbeats and Adam watched the line of Sylar's shoulders relax almost imperceptibly.

"I'm not only as useful as what's inside my head," he added, in a quieter, more amused tone of voice.

"And why should I trust you any more than you should me?" Sylar said sensibly.

"Oh I wouldn't dream of trusting you, and neither would you me. But I seem to have nothing better to do."

"Boredom then?" Sylar sounded almost insulted.

Adam pressed his mouth shut and shook his head. "Not so much boredom as a desire for excitement, it's so much more interesting to watch things burn with someone who appreciates destruction for its own sake."

"Perhaps I don't want to destroy," Sylar's voice had slid into quiet, something careful and considered. Hard to read but not impossible, no one was impossible.

"And perhaps you do."

"I don't want a partner." That was honest at least, though it was more query than refusal.

Adam waved a hand.

"Oh not a partnership if you find the idea distasteful, perhaps simply a mutually beneficial orbit? And if you don't like it -" Adam said against the rough edge of his jaw. "You can slice my head open and take my abilities either way."

Sylar did nothing but breathe for a long moment. Long enough that Adam couldn't resist pushing at his carefully selected boundaries just a little. Couldn't resist following the warm slide of breath back to the curve of Sylar's mouth and chancing something that he honestly hadn't planned. Barely a kiss to start with, but then quickly becoming something he could in no way describe as anything else. Inside and warm, and Adam shifted up onto his toes, to give himself some sort of equal footing without laying a hand on Sylar's neck, and physically pulling him down. Sylar didn't touch him for a long moment, and when he did it was a cautious slide of fingers on his arms, warm through the thin material, only just tight enough to touch skin.

Adam let the kiss grow lazy, not quite so precise. Somewhere past careful manipulation and into simply indulgent. He'd been in the ground too long, he deserved to be a little greedy. But there was something to be said for caution, for patience. He shifted away, one slow lean. Sylar's hands briefly tightened on his arms but then let go completely and let him slide away.

Adam leant back, hands on the edge of the sink, and waited while the world decided.

"Maybe the conversation doesn't have to end yet," Sylar said smoothly.


End file.
